More On The TSTA Lawsuit Over Grants To Private Institutions
By Vince Leibowitz on Aug 6, 2008 in Texas Education
We’ve obtained a copy of the lawsuit that the Texas State Teacher’s Association has filed against the Texas Education Agency over its dropout prevention grants going to private entities. You can review the suit here (.pdf). There is some great stuff in the appendix, too.
A couple of paragraphs jumped out at us as a pretty easy way to help explain to readers the issues the lawsuit seeks to address:
“The Administrative Procedure and Practice Act provides minimum standards of uniform practice and procedures for state agencies…An agency and its head are only semi-autonomous. The legislature may delegate its powers to an administrative agency, but a state agency only has the power and authority granted to it by the legislature. Rules and regulations that an agency or agency head imposes must be in harmony with the authorizing legislation.
The Texas Education Code as amended by HB 2237 does not authorize the Commissioner to award pubic money to a private, non profit organization or entity to pvovide “educational programs to students in any of grades K-12.” There is no specific authority and no implied authority.
In short, the Legislature has never granted TEA the right to subsidize non-public educational programs in this manner. Implied authority in this case would mean authority either that the legislature intended to give TEA authority to do this and simply did not, or that TEA has the authority to do this even though it hasn’t been expressly granted because such authority is necessary to carry out its requirements under the legislation. Neither is the case.
[...] at Capitol Annex takes a look at the Texas State Teacher’s Association lawsuit against the Texas Education Agency for giving public funds to private [...]